


Star Stuff

by Carrogath



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 12:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15885897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: When the show isn't going quite her way, Hana decides to improvise.





	1. Star Stuff

The past two weeks had hit her like a dozen micro-missiles to the face.

First, there was the absolute bombshell of a revelation Yuna had dumped on her earlier this month. She made Hana promise not to tell anyone, even though it was the worst news she had ever gotten by a long shot. Then, there was the off-the-radar Gwishin attack that had caught everyone by surprise. Hana fucked up and nearly ruined the mission, and escaped unscathed only because Yuna managed to cover her ass in time for her to shoot down the Goliath-class that was threatening to kill them all.

Finally, there was her stupid stunt. _The_ stupid stunt. Dae-hyun had been supportive of her, because he was her childhood friend and he was always supportive of whatever she did, but he had gotten heat for it too. It was less than what Hana had gotten—forfeiture of three months’ worth of pay, indefinite restrictions on accessing her mech (though Dae-hyun sneaked it to her anyway, and she had no idea how he managed to steal something that big; it actually concerned her a bit), no official streams, a broken leg, a broken arm, two crutches, a wounded ego, and the sudden and vicious realization that maybe she was a little more suicidal than she thought.

The worst by far, though, was Yuna’s reaction.

Nothing.

It had been nothing. She acted the same as she always did, not an eyelash out of place. It terrified Hana. Their relationship was so new and so fragile and she was totally convinced she had ruined it forever, and she couldn’t even tell because Yuna wouldn’t even talk to her about it. There was so much shit going on in her life she could barely keep up, and they had just gotten together, and then she had to go and ruin it because of some crazy impulse to prove herself or maybe just die and it was awful.

Everything was awful. Hana had a terrible diet because she felt terrible; her stomach was messed up; she was barely eating; she was barely sleeping. Even when Seung-hwa tried to cook her a decent meal, she felt like she was going to throw it back up. She spent most of her time in her room browsing the internet in a semi-coherent haze, looping dumb videos over and over again, and when she couldn’t stay up any longer, she would sleep for twelve hours, fourteen.

Yuna tolerated it, until she couldn’t. She dragged Hana out of bed (physically, because she was squad leader and Hana’s direct superior and could unlock the door with her ID card if she so desired), told her to put on real clothes, and then threw her in the backseat along with her blankets and drove her out for two hours to an abandoned lot overlooking the water, where the paparazzi wouldn’t see them, at ten o’clock at night.

She parked the car, turned off the engine, and waited. Hana pulled the blankets tighter around herself. She wasn’t cold; she wasn’t hot. She was just… numb.

She couldn’t tell how many minutes had passed until Yuna spoke up, and then Hana found herself speaking over her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hana—”

“I know I fucked up.”

Yuna glanced at her from the driver’s seat.

“I’m really sorry,” she said again. “You just told me all these… horrible things, and then…” She looked down. “You still expected us to fight after that, and that was after we started dating, and then you almost got killed and it was my fault and then I almost got myself killed and I—”

“You’re alive,” said Yuna.

“Barely,” she said, and laughed. She clutched the blankets tighter around herself. “Why’d you take us here?”

“I wanted to talk,” she said. “In private.”

“About what?” asked Hana. “There’s so much to talk about, and there’s nothing to talk about. It’s so obvious what the issue is, I just…” She shook her head and looked away, out toward the open water, the pitch black sky. “I don’t get how you expect us to work anything out.”

“I know,” she said. “It was…” Yuna covered her face. “It was my mistake. I’d… gotten the news just a little before you did.”

“Then we started going out.”

“Then I had to tell you.”

“And then the training practices started going wrong.”

“And we weren’t prepared for the attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. I… We shouldn’t even be going out. This is my fault.”

“But you asked me out because you knew,” said Hana. “Because you thought this would be your only chance.”

“It’s not,” she said.

“No,” said Hana, throwing off her blankets. “It’s exactly as bad as you said it is. There’s nothing after this. No plans. No strategy. No research. No one even cares about us. We’re entertainment. Disposable pawns. We’re… C-list actors in a bad action movie where we’re all supposed to die at the end.”

Yuna sighed. “Hana…” she said again, and then out of the corner of her eye Hana saw her get up out of her seat. She opened the car door, got out of the car, and climbed back in beside her. Then she looked at her. “I wanted to ask you if you wanted to quit. We know, now. We know what the MEKA division plans for us.”

“Yeah,” she spat. “Nothing.”

“I can tell Kyung-soo and the others. We can all resign at the same time. I already talked to Captain Myung about it. It’s not too late—”

“It is too late.”

Yuna looked stunned.

“It is too late,” Hana whispered. “I know everything already. I know we were tricked; I know we’re being exploited; I know this is all a scam to make some shady corporations big money. I’m not stupid. I’d figured there was something wrong with it. I think everyone else did, too.”

“Then why did you…”

“Because they told us it would help,” she said, and looked up at her with wide, scared eyes. “Because I wanted to do something, anything! Even when I was hawking soda or hair dryers or makeup or whatever… I always felt like I was wasting my time streaming. Even if they were lying to us, I thought it would help. You know. My fans would see I was trying to do something. That I wasn’t going to sit around playing games while Busan burned to the ground.”

Yuna was quiet.

“But I’m not a soldier. If it wasn’t real—if the attacks were staged—if it was just a gimmick to get people to believe in the war effort, I think I’d be OK with that. But it’s not a game. It’s real.” She stared at her, desperate. “This is war. No, it’s worse! It’s… I don’t even know what it is anymore. I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be, anymore.” She looked away. “I know who D.Va is,” she said, pulling her one good knee up to her chest. “But Hana…”

Yuna looked at her. “Well,” she said, “who do you want to be?”

“Someone,” she said. “But so does everyone else. We’re all afraid of being forgotten.” She pressed closer to her. “I want to be a shooting star—but just in the moment before it disappears.” She closed her eyes. “It’s not fair. We’re all shooting stars. We’re all little specks of dust in the sky, and one day we’re all going to burn out.”

Yuna kissed the top of her head, and Hana felt herself blush. “You told me something, once. You said we were all stars. We were all _those_ kinds of stars. That when we look up at the sky at all the stars we can’t see, it’s really the stars looking up at themselves.” Her voice above Hana was tired, husky. She ran a hand through Hana’s hair. “You’re not just a speck of dust in the sky. You’re one of the ones that last.”

“I just don’t want to lose my home.” She could feel herself choke up. “Everything feels like such a big, pointless lie, and I don’t know what to do anymore. If I have to die for the sake of… whatever, I at least want to be remembered for all the happiness I brought to people. I don’t want to die a tragedy. It just gets so hard,” her throat closed up and her eyes stung and she sniffled through her tears, “I don’t even want to do this anymore, I just—!”

She could feel Yuna bury her face in her hair. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s not all right!” cried Hana, hysterical. Her breaths were coming in hitched and panicky. She sat up, and Yuna sat up along with her. “It feels like the world is ending. There’s no end to these attacks, and there isn’t even a plan to stop them because the government is bankrupt! I…” she groaned into her hands, almost screaming, “I wanted to die back there so badly I was disappointed to wake up. It feels so hopeless. We’re just being sent out to get ourselves killed so some business can turn a profit before the Omnics take over South Korea.” She spun around to face Yuna. “Where’s the glory in that? In being some human sacrifice to provide sob stories for the media? I don’t care about good press! I want to cause a scandal; I want to go public with our findings; I want the whole fucking world to burn!” She balled her hands into fists. “I don’t even care if I burn with it. If we’re all stars then we should all be on fire anyway!” She buried her face in her hands with a sob.

Yuna leaned in. Hana’s chest swelled with the most intense, most awful genuine love for her, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t say anything,” said Hana. “I know what you’re going to say.”

She didn’t. She kissed away a tear that had fallen on Hana’s cheek, only for it to be replaced by two more.

“Is that what you want?” she whispered, cupping her face. “To burn up?”

Hana’s face was on fire. “No,” she said weakly. “Only losers quit.”

It sounded like such a lie, even to her own ears, but being both really upset and unbelievably horny for Yuna had made her so confused she didn’t know whether she wanted to fuck or cry or cuddle or be left alone and she was making it so hard to think, think, _think_ —Hana crushed their mouths together and felt Yuna’s tongue brush against hers, Yuna’s hand on her chest, and wrapped arms around her neck and drank in her taste and her scent and the warmth of her body for as long as she could bear it.

She was always so quiet and so composed that Hana felt a rush of satisfaction at seeing how flushed her skin was, how dark her eyes were when they broke apart, how obviously Yuna wanted her and how willing she was to show it.

And then Hana laughed. “I’m sorry. I must have been so gross to kiss.”

“I have had so much worse,” said Yuna. “Don’t sweat it.”

Hana wrapped her arms around her, tight.

“Only losers quit, huh?” Yuna asked.

“I’m not a quitter,” said Hana. She felt Yuna tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Then she said, “You suck. You suck so bad. I always feel like nothing else in the world matters when you start touching me.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“It’s pure evil.”

Yuna chuckled. The sound was positively demonic.

They sat in the dark for a while, enjoying the silence. Hana expected a flash to go off, some telltale sign that some intrepid (if invasive) reporter had somehow managed to stalk them all the way out here. She wiped her face with her the back of her good hand. She felt so gross. Then Yuna pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and started wiping her face, and then she started to feel like a little kid instead.

“Stop,” she said, “you’re going to make me cry again.” She grabbed the cloth from her hands and wiped all the stuff off her face. “I don’t want to go back,” she mumbled into it.

Yuna grasped her bad hand, the cast around it. “They’re going to know we went out by ourselves. Kyung-soo and Seung-hwa and Jae-eun.”

“They’re not dumb. They probably already know about us.” Hana exhaled. “I thought the timing was weird, but I was just so crazy about you… I still am, really. I didn’t realize you asked because you were desperate. But when you told me about—MEKA and the government running out of money and the research getting shelved and just… everything,” she looked to the side, out the window, “it all started to make sense. I wanted to believe you were just being nice, but… No.” She brushed her hair behind her back. God, she didn’t understand what Yuna found so attractive about her right now; she was a mess.

“Gaming was all I had,” said Yuna. “I didn’t have time for anything else—for friends, for a social life. I had to pretend that the team was an extracurricular program sponsored by the school to get my parents to approve. But I would do it all again in a heartbeat.” She smiled.

Hana’s heart skipped a beat. “It’s crazy how things ended up like this. With the MEKA and the Gwishin and all the media attention…” She looked down. “I was just a kid. I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I thought I could be someone important for once and…”

“You are,” said Yuna.

“I’m not the only one,” she protested, and ducked when Yuna tried to kiss her again.

“What is it now?” She frowned. Her little look of disapproval was so devastating that Hana felt a stab in her chest.

She stayed quiet. Yuna’s brow furrowed.

“Hana…”

“I thought… I don’t know…” She intertwined her fingers, which was difficult because half of them were in a cast, but she managed, sort of.

Yuna waited.

And waited.

And waited, until she finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I want our relationship to go public,” Hana finally blurted out.

Yuna looked upset. “Why?” she asked.

“I don’t care anymore,” she said. “I love you, and I don’t care if I get booted from MEKA or whatever. Maybe they’ll play it up and then… I don’t know. Maybe people will finally see how ridiculous the whole thing is. I don’t know,” she said again, frustrated, and pulled Yuna in for another quick kiss, already missing her touch. She couldn’t help the moan that left her throat when they parted. “You’re the only reason I’m still even here. I should… quit. Like a normal person. We should all quit. I know you hate the cameras following you around all the time and people get weird when lesbians are involved—”

Yuna pressed a finger to Hana’s lips.

Hana pulled away, curious. “What?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Well, alright,” she said, uncertain. She gave Yuna time.

Then she started to get impatient.

“Wait,” said Yuna. “I waited for you.”

“Oh my God.” Hana looked away with a grimace.

Then Yuna looked back at her. “If we go public,” she said, in that devilish low tone of hers, “we have to own it.”

“Well, duh,” said Hana. “I knew that much.”

She pressed her lips to Hana’s hair. “It’s not going to be as fun anymore, if we decide to turn this into a public spectacle.”

“I know.” Hana drew lazy circles on Yuna’s chest.

“You’re the idol. What do we tell them?”

“Nothing,” she said. “People will get naturally curious. And then we’ll just tell them the truth: that we fell in love because the Korean government is trying to kill us.”

“That’s not going to come off well,” said Yuna, smiling.

“Those are the kinds of the sacrifices we stars have to make,” said Hana, smiling back. “But I don’t want to drag you into it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I made up my mind a long time ago.” She sounded a little sad.

Hana pushed her away, gently, and looked up at her, resting her hands on her shoulders. “I-I don’t want to ruin the one good thing I got out of this deal,” she said, her voice shaky. “It was just an idea. I want people to know what keeps me going. What gets me up in the mornings. It’s my fans. It’s my friends. It’s my family. It’s you. If I keep lying about who I am, it doesn’t feel like… I’m being honest with myself. Shooting star, red star, dwarf star, whatever,” the metaphor was falling apart in her head, “I’m nothing without the people who make me.” She clenched her fists against Yuna’s chest. “I’m… I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make tonight all about me.”

“It’s all right,” said Yuna, and this time she believed her. She bent down and kissed her on the lips. “My shooting star.”

 

* * *

 

“ _We are all made of star-stuff.”_

\- Carl Sagan, _The Cosmic Connection_

 

The poster covered the wall above her monitor, a long stream of smart paper that stretched around the room. Virtual stars twinkled against distant galaxies and glittered in the darkness—her very own night sky.

She left her door open for once, and Kyung-soo took the opportunity to poke his head in and make a snide comment.

“You know, Carl Sagan wasn’t the first person to say that.”

“Shut up, Kyung-soo,” she said, without turning around. “You’re just jealous of my mad street cred.”

“’Mad street cred?’ Who even says that anymore?”

Hana pulled her followers list up on her screen. “If I had to guess?” Her eyelids fluttered. “One-point-one million D.Votees, and counting.” Sure enough, the number ticked up as soon as she spoke it.

Kyung-soo mumbled under his breath and walked away.

She checked the clock.

7:55 PM, Korea time. She’d told people she would have a special announcement tonight, at eight. Her fans would know first. That would only be fair. Then the media would catch on a few seconds later. Then most of the rest of the world would know—or at least, that’s how it felt.

It was going to be OK. Yuna had said it would be OK, and that given how fucked up MEKA management was anyway, they would probably be allowed to stay on even if Captain Myung had issues with it. They weren’t military. They were MEKA. Entertainers. Celebrities. Heroes.

She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

_Game time._

Then she closed the door, flicked on the camera, and put on her best D.Va smile.

“Hey, everyone! So, I said I would have a big announcement for you tonight, and that means…”


	2. Extras

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _wait there's more?_
> 
> I don't normally do this, but this one-shot references a lot of things from a previous unfinished work, so I thought it'd be helpful to post that work here.
> 
> The following is an unfinished fic that I will not be continuing. Hopefully it provides some nifty ideas for anyone who was considering writing about D.Va and her MEKA allies.

Yuna Lee had joined the MEKA division for one reason, and one reason only: to bail out Hana Song’s stupid ass.

Yuna hated the government. She was a regular face at student protests, an outspoken critic for the current administration, and a hard-line proponent of the theory that the MEKA division was an absolute sham and a scheme devised by private companies to profit off the war while sacrificing popular young celebrities in the name of corporate glory. She was the opposite of an ideal MEKA candidate: rebellious, unsociable, bitterly anti-establishment, and convinced of a deeply ingrained corporate influence that had permeated the Korean government for years. When news of the revitalized MEKA program first reached the public, Yuna was the first of Hana’s fans to question its validity.

“Why are they recruiting pro gamers?” she asked. “Why not recruit from the air force first? Fighter pilots are recruited using the exact same criteria to do the exact same work. There’s no reason to recruit civilians right away. And don’t you find the idea of corporate sponsorship suspicious? They’re not racecar drivers. It’s like they’re turning the whole war effort into some…” she made a vague gesture in the air, “twisted Orwellian blood sport. They know people will pay money to watch this, and they don’t care who ends up dying in the process.”

But what surprised her the most hadn’t been the fact that Yuna signed up in spite of her rabid anti-government agenda. It wasn’t the fact that she had graduated basic training with top marks, or that she had earned a promotion at the end of training, or that she had ended up on the same squad as Hana as her direct superior and was to be officially addressed as “Sergeant Lee.” It wasn’t even the fact that, as they would eventually learn, Yuna had been right about the MEKA program all along.

It was the fact that Yuna sat down next to her in the mess on their first day of training, having demolished an obstacle course with the best times so far despite barely breaking a sweat, and Hana, for the first time ever after years of knowing her as both a friend and a teammate, felt an unmistakable blush creep up her neck and across her face.

Yuna pretended not to notice. But Hana knew she had.

From then on, it was as if Hana had been possessed by the spirit of some vengeful sapphic entity. She noticed Yuna all the time after that. Her daydreams, once populated by boy band members and popular male athletes at their school, now featured Yuna instead: her expressions of intense focus during training drills, the subtle but growing muscle definition in her arms as the weeks wore on, her telltale reactions whenever Hana interacted with her that suggested a kind of clumsy protective instinct even though Hana pushed herself just as hard and did just as well in her training, if not sometimes better. She’d fallen hard and fallen fast, and to top it all off Yuna insisted on being nice to her.

They had never been close as civilians, but as soldiers, they became inseparable. Yuna and Hana were a natural fit on the same squad, though she would never understand why Kyung-soo was assigned to their group too. Their relationship had always rankled for all sorts of reasons, not the least being that Kyung-soo held a massive grudge the first time Hana had beat him one-on-one in a special Grandmasters Guild tourney, and he had never let it go. He made fun of her for being a self-obsessed attention whore, and she made fun of him for being a sore loser and a shut-in with no social life outside of gaming. Yuna had been the most casual of the three—she played the game to unwind after long school days that invariably spilled into the evening, but having made a habit of it, she was eventually noticed by recruiters and asked to join their school’s local esports team. Her grouchy exterior and seditious beliefs belied a surprising earnestness and even a kind of shy, subtle sweetness, and they made fast friends. Really, Hana couldn’t understand why Yuna didn’t have more.

Whatever the case, her mysterious classmate-slash-teammate had become her closest friend in the military, and she could not for the love of Nano Cola stop _staring_.

 

* * *

 

It would take a while for Yuna to admit the real reason she had joined the military. Her discomfort regarding her position as a MEKA pilot was obvious, downright palpable, but her face was a blank mask during training. She’d been wary during the unveiling of their new living quarters in Busan and warier of the enormous media presence, and her early forced smiles and polite niceties quickly quickly gave way to genuine scowls and irritated responses to nosy reporters and smitten fans alike. She hated the attention, and she hated the job. Hana thought she had joined because she felt personally responsible for protecting the country, even after everything she had said. It just didn’t make sense otherwise.

The worst part was that regardless of how unpopular Yuna tried to make herself, it utterly backfired in her face. Hardcore MEKA fans ate up her bad attitude and prickly personality, her refusal to give interviews, or smile for the camera, or be involved in the PR side of things at all. To avoid the crush of social media admirers and requests and demands from advertisers and companies and nonprofits and government watchdogs, she threw herself into training and exercise and random paperwork until their first real fight against the Gwishin—and though the media had painted it as a successful effort, the reality was that they barely survived the attack.

Hana Song had emerged as a hero, and the rest of her teammates were left in the dark.

Yuna changed after that first fight. Hana had seen it coming, of course. She smiled even less—almost never—and Hana rarely saw her relaxing on base. She spent most of her time at the MEKA headquarters when they weren’t training together, and one day, when she came back, she requested to speak to Hana in utter confidence.

They ended up in one of Yuna’s parents’ spare apartments. Her parents were apparently rich or something and Yuna could just waltz into one whenever she needed to. Yuna sat her down on the sofa and explained everything she had learned from Captain Myung—about the revival of the MEKA program, the source of the funding for the modified drones, the decision to involve corporate interests, and the surreal series of decisions that led to it all coming to fruition.

The whole idea had been weird, Hana knew that. Yuna had a habit of saying things that made people uncomfortable, and Hana figured it was just one of those things, something she said to rile her up, to keep her on her toes.

This, though, this was their hard reality. This was stone-cold fact.

They didn’t have any plans to defeat the Gwishin. They had run out of federal funding for the MEKA program after months of botched R&D, and left the remains to some megacorporation to do whatever they wanted with it. The rest of the military was focused on damage control and protecting the country, but they had never expected to destroy the Omnium for good.

Hana felt the blood drain from her face. “This was supposed to be a trial period,” she said. “They were supposed to build more units after collecting data from the Gwishin attacks. W-what happened to that? Where’s our support? When did we get sold off to some business for _profit_?”

Yuna left the evidence—tablets, mostly, a few thumb drives—on the table and stood up. “Captain Myung thinks it isn’t completely hopeless. But it was always obvious to me.” She clutched her elbows. “The MEKA division still takes orders directly from the ROK armed forces. Our… shareholders don’t have any say in how we operate, but they do control how much money goes to our operation costs. I guess the whole media circus is for the sake of keeping people invested enough to justify paying for the program even though we’re not making any progress. I don’t understand it, either. But from what it sounds like, the government has been lying about their finances for a while, now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hana. “If we don’t get enough viewers they’ll kill the program and let everybody die? That doesn’t make sense!”

“Why else would the MEKA division be so heavily televised? If all they wanted to do was the right thing, then they would have found the money already.”

Hana felt devastated. Slowly but surely, she could feel the panic rising in her chest. “So, wait. The MEKA division is owned by some corporation now… Does that mean the whole country is in debt? What are they doing about it?”

“Buying time by distracting the public, apparently,” Yuna muttered. “MEKA is still technically army. Everyone is still expected to do their jobs despite being told all of this—and really, I wasn’t supposed to tell you, either. It’d be worse if people found out and decided it was better to give up.”

“Why did Captain Myung tell you, then?”

Yuna looked away. “She told me I was a good soldier. That I could get reassigned to a different division if I wanted, or enroll in officer training. She thought it was a waste to be throwing my life away for a group of sociopathic businesspeople. But I couldn’t. Not after seeing the look on her face. She thinks we can still salvage MEKA. All we need to do is collect enough data on the Gwishin to update the drones’ AI and protect against hacking. R&D is still staffed, even though they’re not doing much. The new company fired the government contractors that were working on the drones before and brought a whole new group of people in, hired directly by them.”

“So the mission hasn’t changed,” said Hana. “It’s just that they’re way more likely to drop the program if people stop caring about what happens to us.”

“That doesn’t mean they’d leave us to die,” said Yuna. “But they own the MEKA division, practically speaking. We’re private contractors working for the government. Did you read the contract before you signed it?”

“Well, no…”

“I read the whole thing. If they don’t think the MEKA division is tenable as an actual military force or even as entertainment while the real work is being done, then they’ll probably find some other use for it.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better,” she mumbled.

“On top of all of that,” said Yuna, “they can fire us if they don’t like the way we behave. Captain Myung told me to smile more.” She smirked a bit. “Fuck that.”

Hana stood up, trying to let the revelations settle in. “This is crazy… So a bunch of rich people are paying for MEKA out of their own pockets because they think they can make money off of it, and we have to justify our existence by sucking up to the media because we aren’t making progress fast enough for them?”

“More or less.” Yuna’s expression was unreadable.

“It shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s profitable or not. Don’t these people care about South Korea? They might not even _be_ Korean! We don’t even know who they are!” Hana ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “I mean…” It did make sense, when you considered everything that was happening to them. The publicity stunts, the insistence on recruiting popular streamers rather than any old esports player, their flashy living quarters, the pressure to game and stream and communicate with their fans in their downtime as if they never needed privacy or sleep… Hana felt her heart sink. “So…” She looked up at Yuna. “If you knew all of this, then why did you join? You’re giving yourself up to the people you hate the most, and you’re not even getting anything out of it.”

Yuna cracked a grin, and Hana saw a flash of something downright demonic in her eyes. “Well, it was just an educated guess. But now that we know, that gives us power, right?”

Hana’s mind immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. “You’re not going to go public with this?”

Yuna sat down on the couch. “Not yet. I think most of our superiors know, anyway. And anyone with half a brain could guess that there was something wrong with the MEKA program. All telling people now would do is confirm their beliefs—an investigation wouldn’t reveal anything that the people on top don’t already know about. The government wouldn’t do anything about it… and any attention the international community would draw to it would just mean more profitability while nothing substantial gets done. We’re not in a position to change things.”

“Well… What about the fans?” Hana asked. “If they knew I was blowing myself up for no reason, I mean…” She looked at her. “They’d be pretty upset, no? I could back to streaming normal games instead of combat practice—”

“Which you can do now,” said Yuna. “You aren’t obligated to stay. No one is.”

“It doesn’t feel right. Not when you’re here.” She was quiet. “This is big news, Yuna.”

“But I think you’re right.” Yuna looked directly at her, in a way that made Hana’s heart pound. “I think we can use the nonstop publicity to our advantage.” She stood up and walked over to her, and then made a funny expression and hesitated. “I…” her brow creased, “I don’t want you to think I’m… manipulating you or anything…”

“No,” said Hana, a bit confused, “of course not.”

Then she took a step back, and straightened up. “Good.” Her expression looked reluctant again. “I don’t know, Hana. I know you’re the competitive type, but this is more than just about winning.”

“I know that,” she said. “What’s wrong?” She frowned and squinted. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I haven’t had time to think of anything yet,” Yuna admitted. “I can’t believe it’s real, honestly.” She looked away, into the distance. “They were just… theories, because I was sick of being pressured by my parents and sick of hearing about the Gwishin and needed something to make myself feel better—”

“You still haven’t told me why you joined,” said Hana. She looked up at her. “You’re super smart and your parents have money and you had a college degree waiting for you and everything. You could have studied in, I don’t know, Japan or something. It’s pretty safe over there now, right?”

Yuna looked hurt for some reason. Hana recognized the expression from when they talked about her parents, or her future—boyfriends, dating, schoolwork, things like that. She only really perked up when talking about gaming or clothes or makeup. Everything else seemed to be a weird source of stress for her.

“Do you like this job? Being a MEKA pilot, I mean.” She leaned against the arm of the sofa.

“Um…” The more she thought about it, the less she liked it, but she felt she didn’t have a choice now. “I think people are really exhausted by all the Gwishin attacks. It’s really no surprise someone decided to try to make money off of it… I don’t mind being entertainment, but I don’t want it to feel like all the training and fighting—that the actual suffering is totally pointless.” She hugged her arms. “I smile because that’s what people want to see these days. And people love gaming and they love cheering for their favorite team or player or whatever it is, and they love getting caught up in it all. I think what the corporation did… was evil. But now that we know there’s a problem, we can draw attention to it. So we’re in a good position in that sense.”

“Yeah.” She rocked herself against the sofa, deep in thought. “Yeah, that’s a good answer.”

Hana blinked. Was this a test? “Um… Are you doing OK? You’ve been acting funny all day and I’m getting kind of worried.”

Yuna covered her mouth with her hand. Her face was obscured by her hair. Then the hand dropped from her face. “It’s nothing.” She managed a tired smile.

It sure as hell couldn’t be nothing.

“Why don’t we get something to eat?” Yuna suggested. “I’m pretty beat from all the stuff that happened today.”

“OK,” said Hana, and strode over to her side and looked up at her from the corners of her eyes.

Then, without warning, she slipped her hand into Yuna’s own and squeezed her palm, tight.

Yuna squeezed back.

 

* * *

 

She had to have known. Combined with everything else, it was driving Hana a little crazy. She could guess that Yuna was avoiding the subject of their relationship for the sake of the team—overly familiar behavior could ruin morale or get Yuna reassigned when their whole strategy revolved around them being portrayed to the public as a close-knit team. So far, Hana and Yuna mutually agreed to keep up appearances and play into the media’s message, which was that the MEKA division was their first line of defense against the Omnics and their efforts were proceeding as expected.

In reality, only warships, submarines, and fighter jets kept the casualties low, and the military hadn’t made a dent in the numbers of the Gwishin. The Omnium mined resources deep within the ocean, far out of reach of most modern equipment. If they didn’t take out the Omnium, they would be stuck fighting the Gwishin indefinitely. Damaged Gwishin units had to be salvaged immediately or they would disappear within hours of being spotted; trackers had proved that the same Gwishin unit could be repaired and sent back into battle within weeks or even days. Even given international support, the situation seemed hopeless. The Gwishin lacked the ability or refused to communicate with humans or friendly Omnics, and the impulse to destroy seemed to be hard-coded in their programming.

Back at the base, Hana was getting along a little better with Kyung-soo and the others. Yuna didn’t care for military formalities and acted more like the team caretaker than their squad leader, taking charge only during training exercises and actual combat operations. Jae-eun disappeared from base fairly often and Seung-hwa was really nice, actually, for someone who called himself “Overlord”; they were easy to get along with, even if Jae-eun did get a little too brash every now and then. Kyung-soo respected Yuna, having recognized her from their esports days, but Jae-eun occasionally disobeyed orders and went off to do his own thing. Seung-hwa or Kyung-soo had to usher him back into line during exercises, though thankfully he listened and paid attention during their first real mission.

Yuna, though, Yuna never stopped driving her heart rate up, and Hana was getting the sense that she was having fun seeing how nuts she could drive her. She was so _subtle_ with her teasing that every move she made in Hana’s direction sent her imagination in a flurry of different directions, and Hana was sure that at least half of the little cues she was giving off were completely unintentional and meant nothing. Hana was convinced that Yuna returned her feelings, but confronting her about it would have gotten her nowhere.

She’d started finding other girls attractive, too. It was horrible. She wanted to go back in time to when she had been straight and into Dae-hyun and everything had been so much simpler. She knew she could trust Dae-hyun with her life, though.

So naturally, she told him about it while they were working on her mech in the hangar.

Dae-hyun’s eyes grew huge. “Hana, you can’t go out with her!”

“Shh! I know, jeez.” Hana sighed and put down her screwdriver, having fastened all of the cockpit’s bits and bobs back into place. “I was just tired of keeping it all to myself. I swear I didn’t see her that way until we had basic training together, and then it was like…”

Dae-hyun looked like a deer in the headlights.

Hana groaned in frustration as she climbed back out of her mech. “I swear to God, Dae-hyun.”

His eyes snapped back into focus. “You guys are already pretty close, though, aren’t you? That seems like… With everything else going on, that sounds like it could cause a lot of issues.”

“Yeah.” Hana put her screwdriver back into its toolkit on the folding table and pulled off her work gloves. “I know. And I think she likes me back,” she hopped onto the table, “and I don’t think it’s going to stay like this for much longer…”

“Well…” Dae-hyun looked down. “I mean, circumstances change. You’re not going to be a MEKA pilot forever.”

“It’s just way harder than I thought it would be,” she mumbled. “I love having her around and I think I’d feel really lost without her, but… my mind starts going crazy around her. I like her way too much; I’d never thought I’d be this…”

Dae-hyun looked at her, unblinking.

Hana looked away, suddenly shy. “She’s got all this weird stuff going on in her life that I don’t know about and I can never tell what’s going through her head. I wish I could make it easier on her somehow, but I’m already doing everything I can think of.”

“That’s her job, isn’t it? To be squad leader?”

Hana bit her tongue. She couldn’t tell him. Not now. “Captain Myung is kind of playing favorites with her,” she said instead. “She’s got these extra responsibilities she’s not allowed to tell anyone about, so she’s even busier than she usually is.”

Dae-hyun looked down at her hand. She was squeezing the edge of the table so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

“I think she’d feel better if you relaxed more,” Dae-hyun said slowly. “You’re the most cheerful person on the team.”

Hana snorted. “It’s all fake, though.” She brushed away a strand of hair from her face. “The Gwishin are moving in. They’ll hit the mainland in a few days, so we’ve been practicing our drills nonstop. It’s nothing like the real thing, though. We’re in better shape than the other squads, so we’ll have more air support than last time, but it could be bad if we don’t prove ourselves.”

“You did pretty well the first time around,” said Dae-hyun.

“Yeah,” said Hana.

She was their star, after all.

“It never stops being scary, though,” she admitted. “It’s always terrifying whenever someone gets hurt.”

This time, Dae-hyun was silent. She saw something like anger flare up in his eyes, and then slowly fade. “You just need to last long enough to get the data for the drones,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Then you won’t need to pilot them from the inside anymore.”

Hana slid off the table. “That’s what they say,” she said.

“Hana?”

“Nothing.” She turned her back to him. “I just hope this all pays off in the end. I wouldn’t want our efforts to be for nothing.”

“Hana, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t respond.

 

* * *

 

Their next mission proved to be a success, and once again, Hana was their star pilot, fiercely fending off a horde of Gwishin before Jae-eun could sweep in and help take them out for good. The media played it up so hard and for so many days that she dreamed of camera flashes and newsfeeds and autograph signings and so many other things when she honestly just missed being in Yuna’s presence. They’d gotten away with hardly any injuries this time, which Yuna and Captain Myung chalked up to luck rather than skill. They were still green, still new to combat.

Hana, though, was riding a sorely-needed high, and this time, she even had Yuna with her. They split the five-piece chicken and rice combo at one of the many fried chicken joints in Busan, in a spot by the windows overlooking the water. The skin made a satisfying _crackle_ in her mouth.

“Mm,” she moaned, “I haven’t been to this place in forever.”

Yuna picked up a cube of pickled radish with her chopsticks. “That’s what you said the last time you came here. Last week.”

“We gave them what they wanted, didn’t they? A show.” Hana gestured at her and grinned. “The results are a little early, but it looks like we managed to salvage a lot of the Gwishin units for once. Maybe they can do something with them this time.”

Yuna looked skeptical. “We’ll see.”

Hana pouted. “What’s wrong? Something good finally happens for once, and you’re still so grouchy over it.” She picked up another piece of chicken from the platter. “Captain Myung didn’t give you more bad news, did she?”

“No,” said Yuna, but she sounded like she was lying. She stared out the window. “Just thinking about our next move.”

“In our plan, you mean? Hm.” Hana considered their options while she chewed on her chicken. “Well, we’ve finally proven we’re competent,” she said between bites, “so we’re in the clear for now.”

“We have another press conference tomorrow,” Yuna groaned, “as if we hadn’t said everything we needed to say already.”

“I think I have a gaming charity event that day, too…”

“South Korea _is_ a charity, at this point.”

Hana stared at her, and then burst into laughter. “Oh my God, shut up! I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that.”

Yuna smirked, and Hana felt a familiar warmth rush into her chest. “It’s no secret,” she said, looking out the window again. She brushed a hand through her hair. Hana longed very desperately to have that hand running through her own. “All we did was show that we were willing to play by their rules. But now we have to demand more.”

“Like what?” Hana sat up in her seat. “It’s like you said. We don’t have any real leverage. We’d have to be way more successful, or get the attention of someone way more important. I don’t even know who that would be at this point. China? India? The US?”

“It shouldn’t be that difficult,” she muttered. “If the drones are so important…”

Hana’s voice got low. “Maybe we should do something flashy.”

She cracked a grin. “You always want to do something flashy.”

“Our first press conference after the battle pulled in five million viewers,” she said, her eyes growing wide. “Five million. That’s ten percent of the country.” She put down her chicken leg. “People are watching. They want to know what’s happening—no one else in the armed forces gets as much screentime, even though we only do a tiny fraction of the work that’s needed to keep the Gwishin away. We have a huge platform to tell the world whatever we want. We have to take advantage of that.”

“It’s… better press than fried chicken and hair dryer commercials,” Yuna remarked.

“See? And I’ve already been in, like, ten of them. They just won’t stop filming!” Hana slapped her hands onto the table. “We should send a message to _those_ people that the job we’re doing matters.”

“But even if we do,” she said, “how will we be able to tell whether it worked? They can sit on their hands all day. They own a part of the military; it’s theirs to do what they want with it. If we reveal our hand now…”

“What’s the alternative? They’re already making loads of money off of our hard work. Off of our suffering! If we die, then they’ll just replace us with another group of dumb kids. If they decide that their bottom line is more important than our lives, then they can drag it out forever.” Hana scowled. “I’ve worked in the industry for a long time. I’m not that stupid. People come in with all these hopes and dreams, and if they can’t cut it they leave depressed and disillusioned. We’re not military. You said it yourself. We’re celebrities. There’s an entire industry devoted to making money off of our personal lives. We’re just some…” she beat the table with her hand, “lifelong reality TV show for viewers to consume. And even if you like it, you can’t admit it without being called an ‘attention whore’ or ‘needy’ or some bullshit like that. We need to share our experiences in a way that will make people take real, serious action.”

Yuna looked at her, and after a moment, Hana realized she was waiting for her to respond.

“Well, then…” she said. “What do you suggest?”


End file.
